YMMV / Anarchy Online

• And You Thought It Would Fail: Due to the disastrous state of the game upon launch, many people predicted it would go out of production within a year or so. it's managed to survive to this day, and most of the horrible bugs have been ironed out.
• Best Level Ever: The Subway is widely liked due to having a lot of "personality" and a good variety of enemies, as well as pretty good loot. The main downside is that people over level 25 can't enter. Thankfully, they eventually made a high-level version of the zone for level 200+ people.
• Draco in Leather Pants: To this day, there are people who insist that Omni-Tek isn't aren't really the villains and it's all a matter of perspective, even though Funcom themselves said at one point they are the bad guys and their faction in the Shadowlands (the Unredeemed) are literal demons, which would seem to settle the issue pretty clearly.
• Fan Nickname:
  • It's not uncommon for players to use shorthand abbreviations for items, professions, stats, etc. A full list can be found here.
  • Some of the nicknames for AO that have popped up over the years include Aimed Shot Online (due to a commonly used special attack), Alpha Online (due to the most common method of PVP combat—using Alpha Strikes), Arithmetic Online (due to the amount of number crunching involved in tweaking characters), Atrox Online (due to the unisex race available that's good at a number of professions), and Adventurer Online (due to the power of the Adventurer profession).
  • Some players also use nicknames for other things, like Mitaar Hero for The Alien Threat, a high-level quest which has colored platforms that players need to traverse onto.
• Goddamned Bats: Rollerrats aren't particularly dangerous to a properly-equipped player, but they have an aggro range seemingly a mile long and their damage type (chemical) is usually not well protected against by most types of armor meaning that while you're at minimal danger of any serious damage, the chance of you getting away without taking some scratch damage is pretty low even if you're just running by.
• Obvious Beta:
  • The original release was a notorious train wreck, with terrible connection issues and Game Breaking Bugs far beyond the normal birthing pains of an MMO, resulting in serious panning by reviewers. However, the devs worked overtime to iron things out, eventually winning AO multiple "most improved game" awards.
  • The new graphics engine, finally released to the live servers, is this as well. It does help, however, that Funcom has clearly stated it's supposed to be a work in progress.
• That One Boss: Any of the randomly generated bosses for the dyna-camps and team missions can potentially be this, as every boss has a random aura which gives them certain powers. While some auras are fairly harmless (such as changing the boss's damage type, there are a few really nasty ones, such as the red or pink auras (which massively increase the boss's already sizeable hp) and the dreaded rainbow aura (which makes the boss change damage type with every attack, and, since no armor is equally good versus all damage types, you can expect to get hit hard.)
• Scrappy Mechanic: No vehicles of any type can be used in the Shadowlands. Even worse, there is no In-Universe explanation for why this is the case. The game just tells you that "vehicles do not function here."
• That One Level: Pandemonium, with Sector 42 coming in afterwards.
• Woobie Species: pretty much all the mutants, but especially the Biofreaks

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